Lonza Expands Oregon Site
Lonza announced an expansion at its Bend, Oregon site to add particle‑engineering and drug‑product suites for development and early‑phase cGMP manufacture. The plan includes new spaces for development, clinical manufacturing of intermediates and drug products to support early‑phase programs (biopharminternational.com).
Lonza is expanding its Bend, Oregon, site again, adding new suites for particle engineering and drug-product work aimed at early clinical programs. (lonza.com) Particle engineering is the work of changing a drug’s physical form — often by shrinking or drying particles — so the body can absorb it more reliably. Lonza says its Bend site specializes in solubility and pharmacokinetics, the rate at which a drug moves through the body. (lonza.com) The company’s Bend campus already supports more than 60 customers and about 80 active projects, and Lonza says its teams there have evaluated or developed more than 2,000 compounds. The site is one of Lonza’s hubs for small-molecule drug development in the United States. (lonza.com 1) (lonza.com 2) The expansion builds on a string of recent investments in Bend. In June 2022, Lonza opened a dedicated early-phase clinical manufacturing facility there with 11 processing suites for spray-dried drug-product intermediates and finished dosage forms. (lonza.com) In January 2023, Lonza said a separate Bend expansion for solid form services had become fully operational in the fourth quarter of 2022, adding remodeled laboratory space for biotech and mid-size pharmaceutical clients working on early-stage compounds. (lonza.com) The company added another layer in August 2024, when it installed bottling and labeling equipment in Bend for tablets and powder-filled capsules used in early clinical trials. Lonza said that step was meant to speed delivery to trial centers. (lonza.com) Lonza’s annual reporting shows the company has been pushing to expand drug-product manufacturing more broadly, saying it is ramping up capacity to support customers from clinical work through larger commercial supply. Bend fits that strategy at the small-molecule end of the business. (lonza.com 1) (lonza.com 2) The site’s capabilities also feed into newer partnerships. In April 2025, Lonza and Ethris said spray-dried formulations for respiratory mRNA vaccine candidates would be developed in Bend under current Good Manufacturing Practice standards, the manufacturing rules used for regulated drug production. (lonza.com 1) (lonza.com 2) For drug companies, the Bend buildout means more of the early manufacturing chain can stay in one place, from shaping hard-to-absorb compounds to making clinical trial material. For Lonza, it keeps a long-running Oregon site at the center of its pitch to biotech clients racing toward first-in-human studies. (lonza.com) (lonza.com)
